Announcing Hyperlocal Commissioned Artists

After launching Hyperlocal at the Online Creative Hub Social on Wed 25 Mar, we were thrilled to receive over 200 submissions from artists across Devon and Cornwall with a huge range of artforms represented, spanning dance, film, installation, animation, graphics, jewellery, painting, sculpture, textiles, performance, print-making, photography, story-telling, poetry, music, and song. 

Working with project partners Exeter University Arts and Culture, Exeter Northcott Theatre and Kaleider, this commissions scheme saw us offering 10 micro-commissions to freelance artists who live in Devon or Cornwall, to explore the hyperlocal of their immediate domestic environment. £500 will be awarded to each successful project, to cover all fees and costs.

With over 200 submissions, project partners were given the difficult task of shortlisting,  but this also left us humbled and inspired by the wealth of creative talent in the region, so we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to apply.

From all the wonderfully innovative submissions received, we have selected just ten. Find out more about each artist and their commission below:

Brendan Barry

A DIY project with a difference. Photographer Brendan Barry has turned his garden shed into a giant pinhole camera, and has documented its transformation. He will be creating a short film about how he did this, including insights into how to develop and fix film using everyday household materials.

Lucy Bell

Writer Lucy Bell is creating a short story that will be recorded as a podcast. Comfort Stop follows a grounded Devon tour guide who, confined to her flat for 12 weeks, begins to express her frustrations to an invisible audience, via guided tours under her couch and through the tin cupboard.

Somin Griffin-Dave

Dual-heritage Sound Artist, Producer and DJ; Somatic (Somin Griffin-Dave) will be delving into the tones and textures of sounds heard in his everyday environment on a macro and micro level and combining them to create a soundscape that reveals a whole new world of sonic possibilities.

Mark Leahy

Echoing the restraints we are all currently having to live by, Writer and Artist Mark Leahy will be creating a series of short poems confined to a square format, which will be shared on his social media. The poems draw on Mark’s readings, news and other text entering his local environment over these uncertain weeks.

The Macbeth-Ripley Family

A family of artists collaborate to create a short vlog-turned-docudrama which will throw light on how the abnormality of life outside seeps into home life. With no new visitors, the family has to manufacture their company; a dinner guest brings humour and familiarity, as well as something of the uncanny, into a profoundly unfamiliar situation.

Ellie Pellowe-Bailey

Illustrator Ellie Pellowe-Bailey is creating a series of sequential illustrations depicting a single person re-navigating their domestic space as if it were a new and exciting world. As mundane objects gain a life of their own these illustrations will throw up questions about our approach to human connections and communication.

Laura Porter

Artist Laura Porter is working with deconstructed clothing items donated by members of her household to create a small series of sculptural works inspired by the surfaces that are subliminally part of our everyday, which have now come under new scrutiny in the new ‘normal’ we are now living in.

Jennie Rawling

The Borrowers meets Honey I Shrunk this Kids in this short playful puppetry performance from Cornish-based puppeteer, actor and writer Jennie Rawling. Explore her immediate domestic environment from the point of view of a 10cm puppet, as they scale giant noticeboards and navigate around prickly houseplants on their way to a first date.

Katie Villa

A glimpse of family life in lockdown from performer, theatre-maker and parent Katie Villa. Inspired by her four-year old’s obsession with destroying piles, this short photographic diary of parenting through a lockdown will see Katie create daily mini installations of piles of things she finds around the house, inspired by her environment and its limitations and pressures.

Jam Collective with oho_co

The hyperlocality in this commission is a Cornish boatyard: a scene of constant adaptation, and home to a motley crew living across 30+ vessels. When a new pay-what-you-feel food-surplus shop opened on-site, members of Jam Collective, a group of artists and craftspeople, began making preserves to share with their neighbours in exchange for food stories. An improvised ‘jam’ of recorded sounds and conversation snippets provides an aural snapshot of this maritime ecology.

We look forward to sharing the final commissioned projects with you very soon!